Midhope Moors – burned blanket bog

Burned Sphagnum photographed yesterday on Midhope Moors, Peak District. And here is Midhope Moors with the blanket bog shaded in buff from the Defra MAGIC system https://magic.defra.gov.uk/MagicMap.aspx And some more burned Sphagnum up there in the blanket bog. Well, this looks to me like a recent burn.  I understand that Wakefield Farms are the landowners…

Social impact

Do you recall that over a year ago a PhD position was advertised at the University of Northampton, just down the road from me, on the social impact of driven game shooting.  At the time I wrote this. Yesterday I went to a seminar on the first year of the study and heard how the…

Policing the burning agreement

This was the example of moorland burning I saw on the northern edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park three weeks ago. Does this comply with the voluntary agreement made by many grouse moors not to burn on blanket bogs? There are a couple of things that I would need to know before I could…

News of a reader

Sometimes I wonder what has happened to erstwhile frequent commenters on this blog who seem to have gone missing. Giles Bradshaw has commented many times on this blog – usually under his own name but I’ve caught him trying to have conversations with himself under aliases too.  Giles’s comments go back to August 2011 and…

An NE staff member writes…

The following is a lightly edited version of an email I recently received from someone whose identity I know, and who I know to be a NE employee.  Understandably their identity is not revealed here. The editing I have done is mostly to remove clues as to their identity. I work for NE.  I’m writing…

How to please an author

Occasionally, and obviously out of the blue, I get an email a bit like this. Just finished Inglorious. Thank you so much for writing this book. I am ‘relatively’ knowledgeable I feel about land use issues, but I learnt so much from you.  I was rudely awakened as to the realities of the driven grouse…

What your MP says about the Manifesto for Wildlife

About a month ago a group of independent experts , under the leadership of Chris Packham, published a People’s Manifesto for Wildlife. Many of us have written to our MPs asking thenm for their views (not for a party politrical broadcast in favour of the current government) and those responses are slowly coming home to…

Hedgehog highways motor on!

Hugh Warwick’s e-petition in favour of Hedgehog Highways is approaching a third of a million signatures!  Fantastic work! Fantastic support! I regret that it isn’t on the Westminster parliament website because if it reached anything like that number there (which it might not for a variety of reasons) then it would have even more clout….

An opportunity

That nice Michael Gove wants to know what you think about National Parks in England (I think in England – I’ve only had a quick look). The consultation looks easy enouh to complete and we have ages to do so – two months. I’ll be coming back to this with some thoughts on how to…

Big Match fortnight ends midnight

This Jaguar is looking at you for help. The Big Match fortnight ends at midnight tonight – any money you donate before then will be matched and therefore doubled. So now is, please, the time to donate to this project to protect Jaguar habitats and all the life that depends on it in northern Belize….